Darus looked out over the edge of the trench. Detecting no sign of enemy movement, he crouched back down, to avoid exposing himself to a snipers deadly aim. "No point really," he thought to himself, "the odds of a round from a sniper rifle penetrating my helmet are very small. But then, why take the chance?" He turned to his squad, which was once at full strength, but now, three months into the war, squad Kappa of the Sons of Artemis first, and only, company so far, was down to six of its original ten members.
"Brother-Marines," he began. "The enemy has not made a move in several days, which means that they are building their strength, and will attack soon. Prepare yourselves, this is going to be one of our most difficult challenges yet." This was true, because currently the Sons of Artemis were only twenty years old, and had not yet seen action in a major engagement. A rune in Darus' visor alerted him to an incoming message.
"Darus," the voice stated simply.
"Brother-Sergeant, you and your squad are to hold your current position and wait for reinforcements from the 2nd Messinian Guard Regiment. For the Emperor."
"Aye, the Emperor protects," Darus responded before switching off his comm-link. He addressed his squad again.
"Marines, we are to hold here and wait for reinforcements. Cirian, prepare the heavy bolter. Faros and Mena, take our right flank. Heril and Sefius, take the left. You have your orders. Suffer not the unclean to live!"
"Purge the unclean," the squad replied, in perfect unison.
The marines took up their positions, simultaneously checking their weapons and preparing the defenses. Darus looked to his own war gear, testing, as he had hundreds of times before, his chainsword, its purr the same as it ever was.
"I pray to the Emperor that you may taste the blood of the usurpers we now face. The same prayer he had said since the beginning, when the alarm was first raised. When the forces of the heretic Death Guard and their cultist lackeys first invaded the Thracian Primaris system.
The first pops of small-arms fire showed Darus that the Emperor had, indeed, answered his prayers. He breathed a sigh of relief, before addressing his squad.
"Finally, these pitiless cowards have shown their face. Brother Space Marines, Astartes loyal only to the Emperor and the Imperium He created, show this filth arrayed before us the futility of attacking His beloved sons. Where they strike stand strong, break their strength, and destroy the bodies they gave to the Dark Gods. Remember, you defend your homes, your world, and they would take that from you through fire and corruption. Will you let them?"
"NO!" the squad replied, the volume of their voices causing his ears to ring, amplified both through the comm.-link and through his helmet's external sound receivers.
"Then fight them, as we have since the beginning! Fight them, and suffer not the unclean to live!"
"Purge the unclean!" they shouted, louder than before. Much later in his long and glorious life, Darus would come know the benefits of removing his helmet while raising morale.
After the Brothers had finished their individual prayers, Darus glanced up, toward the tree-line. From it, form upon form surged forth, directly towards Darus' position. He smiled. "They do not know of our minefield, nor the killing zone they are approaching," he thought.
The surge pushed forward, a mass of twisted and corrupted beasts, which could have once been men. They fired what weapons they had, though barely functional and with little ammunition, wildly at friend and foe alike, though they could not even hit the creatures next to them.
Then the first reached the minefield. The explosions ripped massive holes in the ground, which Darus knew would provide cover for any more experienced warriors the enemy might have in their midst. But if there were such soldiers in this mob, they did not realize what was happening and continued their mad rush at the Imperial lines, pushing the beasts in front of them towards the next part of the field. In this fashion the attackers wiped themselves from existence before they had fully penetrated the field.
Darus sighed again. Perhaps the Emperor had not answered his prayers indeed.
But before he could finish his next breath, the next wave attacked, the same as before. This time, however, the first to reach the mines dispatched the remaining section, leaving the monsters behind to continue the advance unhindered, into the relative cover of the tank traps that were to be their next obstacle.
While it was normal practice for tank traps to be placed between the barbed wire sections and the trenches of a standard ground defense, these traps were not, and for good reason. As the mob reached the middle of the traps, Darus uttered one word into his comm., "Terminus."
Seconds later, shells launched from far behind Darus screamed down onto the exposed cultists, who could only cower in fear amongst the plascrete defense-works, intentionally left completely open to the sky. Within minutes, all traces of the second wave were gone, along with most of the traps.
"Cease fire and go to stand-by," Darus intoned. He looked out from his heavily-sandbagged position, over the barbed wire and what was left of the defenses beyond, and across the open field, to the tree line, where he expected to see a third wave of the chaos filth to emerge. But none came.